President Museveni invites Algeria to Uganda for coffee value-addition joint venture
President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has invited Algeria to join Uganda in setting up a joint venture with an aim of adding value to the East African country's coffee.
The President made the call yesterday August 8th, 2023. during a meeting with a delegation from Algeria at the sidelines of the ongoing G-25 Africa Coffee Summit at Speke Resort Munyonyo.
President Museveni told the delegation led by the country's Minister of Commerce and Export Promotion, Hon. Tayeb Zitouni, that Africa, Uganda inclusive has supported Europe economically, but the Western countries have not reciprocated the favour.
“You know when I buy from you something, I'm supporting your prosperity and we have been using our pockets for the last 200 years to support Europeans by buying their vehicles, buying their aero-planes and medicines. When we say that okay you support us also by adding value to our coffee and you pay us more, they don't understand it,” the President said.
“Therefore, what I propose are joint ventures. The country will get more money from coffee through the joint venture than what we are getting now for raw coffee. For raw coffee, we may be getting USD2.5 per kilogram, when we add value together, we may get USD25. Even if Uganda was to get USD25 together with our joint venture and then the external operations take USD10 or 15, it will be a win-win situation and then create more jobs. That is why we want our Northern African friends and those from the Middle East to come and cooperate with us in this USD25 share,” he added.
Hon. Tayeb welcomed President Museveni's proposal, saying that as a country they are willing to join the venture.
“Businesspeople are coming here in September to look through the possible cooperation. We consume coffee worth USD300 million per year. We progressed on importing milk from Uganda and we shall also see what we can do with coffee value addition,” he assured the President.
In the same meeting, the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) Managing Director, Dr. Emmanuel Iyamulemye thanked President Museveni for being a champion of the promotion of the African coffee sector.
“There's big potential and we thank you for championing value addition because most of our coffees are participating in competitions and they have proven to be of very high quality and can create a good market,” he said.
The meeting was also attended by Uganda's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gen. Jeje Odongo among other dignitaries.
